A more credible explanation has recently been put forth by a writer in the New York _Times_, who says that the whole case rested upon a conspiracy. The captain and crew of the _Marie Celeste_ had agreed with the personnel of another ship, that the brigantine be deserted in the region where she was found, her men to put off in a longboat which had previously been supplied by the conspirators in order that none of the _Marie Celeste’s_ boats should be missing. The other vessel was to come along presently, pick up the derelict and collect the prize money, while the owners were to profit by the insurance. The deserting crew was to get its share of the proceeds and then disappear. There are objections to this explanation also. Would a set of sailors and a captain, the latter with his wife and little girl, venture upon the sea in an open boat some hundreds of miles from land? Would the captain have taken his wife and child on the voyage with him if such a trick had been planned? And why was no member of the crew ever discovered in the course of the feverish search or through the persistent curiosity that followed? On the other hand, such tricks have been worked by mariners, and men who set out to commit crimes often attempt and accomplish the perilous and seemingly impossible. The doubts are by no means dispelled by this theory but here is at least a rational version of the affair. * * * * * The World War added two mysteries of the sea to the long roster that stand out with a special and tormenting character. The war had hardly opened when the British navy set out to destroy a small number of German cruisers that lay at various stations in the Atlantic and Pacific. There was von Spee’s squadron which sent Admiral Cradock and his ships to the bottom at the battle of Coronel and was subsequently destroyed by a force of British off the Falkland Islands. There was the _Emden_, that made the Pacific and Indian oceans a torment for Allied shipping for month after month, until she was overtaken, beaten and beached. Finally, there was the _Karlsruhe_. This modern light cruiser, completed only the year before the war began, did exactly what she was designed for--commerce raiding. With her light armament of twelve 4.1 inch guns and her great speed (25.5 knots official, 27.6 according to the British reckoning) she was a scout vessel and destroyer of merchantmen. Since there was no considerable German fleet at sea to scout for, she became, within a few hot weeks, the terror of Allied shipping in the Atlantic. One vessel after another fell to her hunting pouch, while crews taken off the captured or sunken merchantmen began to arrive at American, West Indian and South American ports.